Italian Banking Group, OurCrowd Team Up For Access To Tech Startups In Auto, Fashion, Food

May 23, 2018 | Italian Banking group Intesa Sanpaolo signed an institutional partnership agreement with OurCrowd, a global leader in equity crowdfunding, to facilitate collaboration between Israeli and Italian startups and access to commercial opportunities in Europe in the areas of automotive, FashionTech, FoodTech, and manufacturing, the two firms announced. The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed Wednesday “with the aim to promote startup access to international capital markets” As part of the agreement, Intesa will provide “tailored access for its corporate and SME clients into OurCrowd’s high-tech portfolio, leveraging synergies with strong potential to deliver faster go-to-market traction.” OurCrowd CEO Jon Medved said, the partnership “will accelerate the activity between our companies and between two very important economies in the technology ecosystem.” Mario Costantini, General Manager of Intesa Sanpaolo Innovation Center, said the deal “has the dual target of making available to our business customer.” OurCrowd also has institutional partnerships with National Australia Bank, Singapore’s United Overseas Bank in ASEAN, Citic Pacific in Hong Kong, Reliance Private Client in India, Shanghai Commercial Savings Bank in Taiwan, and Bangkok Bank in Thailand. Since OurCrowd was founded in 2013, the company says it raised over $700 million from over 25,000 investors for over 150 early-stage companies.